Dating Apps Are Holding Back Your Dating Life
Instant and easy isn't the best recipe for dating.
You’re laying on your couch, eyes on the screen. You scroll through selection after selection, option after option, and yet nothing stands out. Nothing looks good. Hundreds, if not thousands of choices to choose from but what’s the point? Even if you end up trying something you see it’ll probably end up being a waste of time. A waste of energy.
It wasn’t always like this, was it? You swear there was a time things were easier. Finding the right fit didn’t prove so problematic, and yet you can’t remember when that time was. It all seems so long ago.
Something catches your eye. You stop, look it over. Read up the short blurb, take a peek at the provided thumbnails. You consider. Should you, or shouldn’t you? Would it really hurt to try it out?
You swipe right, then, exhausted, you turn off the dating app, toss your phone to the opposite end of the couch, and turn on the television.
At least finding something good to watch on TV is easier than finding a quality date.
The Need For An Instant Hook
How often have you heard a dating story, usually from someone older than you, about how the person they are now married to once hated them? Perhaps one bullied the other in high school, or maybe they ran into each other a few times in college and were always butting heads. Yet, for whatever reason, they ended up together.
What’s even more ironic is, more often than not, this relationship is the one that’s lasted when compared to other friends and family members.
Beyond making or a good story, the reality is, a real relationship doesn’t happen instantly. It often takes time. Maybe even a little convincing. There’s a great deal of timing involved as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve liked someone, but they were with someone while I was single, and then when they were single I was with someone else. Or in another country.
Timing is so important for most things in life. A good cup of coffee takes time to make. Yet when it’s done right, that payoff makes the entire morning. Ever have instant coffee? It’s trash. I hope the person who invented instant coffee is serving a life sentence somewhere because it truly is a crime against humanity.
And yet, that’s mobile dating. Swipe-apps are the instant coffee of the dating world. It demands an instant hook, and without that instant hook, you’ll probably pass.
Most movies have a big-time fight scene, explosion, ships bursting into flames, or a major death, right within the first few minutes. And it’s all to hook you. Because if you’re not sold right away, you might walk out (I had a film professor, a producer for ‘The Breakfast Club’, so he wasn’t exactly a nobody, say anyone can ask for a ticket refund within 30-minutes, although I’ve never been able to personally confirm this).
Searching for an instant hook in the dating world is a frustrating situation, and often times those kinds of dates lead to very frustrating endings. The hook of instant attraction and the ability to spin together a few text sentences don’t always equate to a great date, which means you end up back home at the end of the night, frustrated at how it went (if they even showed up at all).
Always Something Better
There’s that pull.
That pull to another side. You feel it. You know it has to be there. That it has to be better. The person you were talking to and had been having fun with hasn’t returned a text in the last day. Thankfully you never deleted your dating app, so you can easily dip your toe back into those waters whenever.
The one foot in, one foot out approach. Can’t completely burn your feet in the hot bat water if you don’t jump all the way in.
But that really is one of the problems, isn’t it? The idea that things will be better. It’s my experience that things don’t magically become better with someone else. Different, sure. But better? Unless temporarily is your favorite word, better isn’t always something that comes with jumping to the next best thing on a dating app.
I vaguely still remember a time before dating apps became the way people met. Following my divorce over a decade ago I had a buddy tell me about this new app called “Tinder.” Said it would show him girls that were also in the area at the same time. I thought it sounded more creepy than anything else. Shows what I know.
And yet I found it far easier to talk with someone, to hit it off at a bar or restaurant or softball game or salsa dance class. The weight of a dating app wasn’t pulling me away. It wasn’t pulling them away. There wasn’t that, “yeah, this is fun, but there might be something better on an app” thought bubble popping up.
There’s not always something better out there. Sometimes it just takes time to discover something better with the person you just met.
Social Media Expectations
There’s such a weight placed on social media expectations it’s difficult to live up to. People only post the best of their lives. If they posted the ugly sides there’d probably be a few less social friends out there. Last thing anyone wanted to see was a live stream of an argument with me and my ex-wife (although I’ll be honest, if I’m out at dinner and there’s a relationship argument going down at the next table, it’s either incredibly cringeworthy or mind-blowingly entertaining).
So we all have this false social media level we believe we need to be at. To take those epic vacation pictures or the perfect family snapshot. To remind everyone how perfect your kids are. Well, social media dating is exactly the same. And it’s beyond the photographs uploaded. It’s the expectations built right into the bios.
Knowing someone is interested in me and they wanted to get married feels a little, well, fast, for me. And yet it’s right there, in writing, signed and sealed and on display.
Imagine if someone walked up to you at the bar and said, “Hi, I’m David, I like IPAs, playing the bass, and I want to get married.”
You’d either spit up your drink laughing or be sprinting down the street, giving the “we gotta go” signal to all your girlfriends.
Social media expectations instantly put unnecessary weight on a relationship that hasn’t even gotten off the ground yet. You can’t put a rock on a baby bird’s back and say, “fly.”
With organic, real, non-app dating there isn’t this kind of built-in expectation. And if there’s one ingredient that kills just about anything in life too soon, it’s unnecessary expectations.
Attention Deficit
Who doesn’t love attention?
It helps stoke egos and, frankly, makes us feel good when someone pays us that little extra bit of attention. Well, there’s nothing better than caressing the fire of self-worth like turning to Bumble or Tinder or Hinge or Chutes and Ladders (or whatever the heck the next dating app will be).
Once again though it’s turning away from the attention that’s currently given to new attention. According to information presented by Digital Information World, the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. A goldfish is 9 (I know, I know, if you’re like me you’re saying, “Not me! No way is that about--woah, look at that cat!). That says a lot of all the flashy visuals and screens constantly bombarding us with information and ads and bright colors. But it’s also a reflection of our dating lives as well. Attention for a current partner just isn’t as long as it once was. And why would it be? If everything else is always new and shiny shouldn’t our dates be the same?
No, they shouldn’t be, but that’s simply what happens when attention spans dwindle, and mobile apps make it so much easier to do it.
A More Meaningful Relationship
Want to unplug from that shortened attention span? To help make that relationship last longer and be more meaningful. Delete those apps once you are with someone (and don’t let your friends install it on your phone for you. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that...yet I’ve never seen many people willing to let someone else use their phone for more than a few seconds, so maybe it’s a made-up line).
Take the distraction and the attention hogging issues out of your life, and your dating life will thank you for it. Yes, it’ll feel strange for a moment. Like when you are driving somewhere and you realize you don’t have your phone. It’s a terrifying feeling at first, and then, after a while, it’s liberating. The same is true with ditching the dating apps and connecting with someone.
No instant gratification. No instant attention. Maybe not even an instant hook. Just something real.